Post-enactment. Realising the unrealised work of art

Abstract

In recent years we have been witnessing the realisation of artistic projects that were conceived in a specific situation, not realised and then produced in other contexts, in some cases even by different people. These are not practices of reenactment, i.e. the repetition of a work executed in the past, nor even a Plan B developed by the artist, but the enactment of projects that come to light for the first time in a context subsequent to the one in which they were conceived. In this essay, I propose defining these practices with the term post-enactment, identifying why we will increasingly be seeing projects of this kind, and suggesting a possible taxonomy. One of the aims is to enhance awareness of the state of progress of the artwork project, the contingencies in which it is produced, and the artist's intentions: a series of considerations useful for the valorization of the artist's work and the project as a critical method, rather than only as a work in a state of potentiality.